James Dickey

Ernest Suarez

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 2 Feb 1923
Died 19 Jan 1997
Activity 1955-1997

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Film/TV Script-writer/ Screenwriter
Literary Critic/ Historian
Novelist
Poet
Teacher/ Professor

Resources

Dickey's Works

Save to Bookshelf

James Lafayette Dickey is widely known for his novel

Deliverance

(1970), which became a national bestseller and an award winning motion picture, but his greatest achievement is as a poet. Born on February 2nd, 1923 in Atlanta, Georgia to Eugene and Maibelle Swift Dickey, he is arguably the most important and influential poet to emerge from the American South in the second half of the twentieth-century. In his verse and fiction, Dickey examined the dynamic between romanticism and naturalism through a stunning array of perspectives, including those of soldiers, suburbanites, laborers, criminals, children, religious fanatics, and animals. He enjoyed cutting a flamboyant figure, and used his celebrity status to promote his own work and poetry in general, appearing on television talk shows and…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2482 words

Citation: Suarez, Ernest. "James Dickey". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 September 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1258, accessed 21 November 2024.]